“Club” Culture

Annie Kronlokken finds affinity with Walmart’s belief in service, adaptability

By Justin Walker

The customer has always been the center for Walmart Inc. and its subsidiary companies as the company aims to help everyone save money and live better. Especially in times of uncertainty, a customer-focused mindset is key for Walmart’s operations. They have to continually unlearn and relearn to ensure its strategy is relevant.

Annie Kronlokken understands the need for a changed perspective. Like her friends, Kronlokken really applied herself in high school, setting her eyes on an Ivy League education. But a family friend kept raving about this school down in Waco.

“Every time they would see me, they were like ‘Sic ’em Bears!’ and ‘Baylor is the best!'” she said. “I could tell the alumni network was always talking about how great of a university it is.”

After submitting an application and visiting campus, Kronlokken felt an overwhelming peace about her decision. She had to go to Baylor. As her friends headed east for the Harvards and Yales, Kronlokken left her home in Minneapolis and established herself in Central Texas.

Annie Kronlokken, BBA ’18
Senior Manager of Sam’s Club Merchandise Finance, Walmart Inc.
Bentonville, ArkansasFrom there, things just started to fall into place. She learned about Baylor Business Fellows—a unique BBA major within the Hankamer School of Business that allows students to combine business with other fields of study—and was accepted into the major. This allowed her to pursue other majors as well, so she added Finance and Math to the mix.

Opportunities continued to open up for Kronlokken as she joined the Baylor Angel Network—an investor network that provides students with hands-on experience as analysts—and then had a summer research trip to Haiti in 2017. Through both ventures, she developed a passion for the consumer space and knew she wanted to work in this area after college. At the start of her senior year, Kronlokken met and developed a mentorship with then Baylor Board of Regents member Bill Simon, the former president and chief executive officer at Walmart.

“Pretty soon after we started meeting, he suggested I go work for Walmart,'” she said. “I was like, ‘Really? Move to Arkansas?'”

Being from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kronlokken wasn’t sure about moving to yet another state where she knew absolutely no one. But Simon believed she would be a great fit and sent her resume to Brett Briggs, Walmart’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.

She joined Walmart after she graduated in 2018, starting off as an analyst in the Accounting and Finance Development Program. Through the two-year program, Kronlokken rotated around Accounting and Finance at Walmart, getting a taste for the different roles within the company, including merchandise finance, internal audit, and mergers and acquisitions.

In May 2020, she moved over to Sam’s Club, a subsidiary of Walmart, as the senior manager of merchandise finance. In this position, she supports the apparel and jewelry business at Sam’s Club. The role is enjoyable because of the open-endedness of it, she said. Her responsibilities vary from strategy—the day-to-day finance work—to decision support modeling.

“One thing I’m working on right now is understanding where the customer is going”, she said. “With the COVID environment, we are gaining new shoppers. We have to figure out where to grow—such as channel and brands—and what it will take to grow in a smart way.”

COVID-19 has been a game-changer for many retail stores and Walmart is no exception, but Kronlokken sees room for innovation to ensure that customers continue to have a great shopping experience.

There is a great mix of opportunity where Walmart and Sam’s Club must continue to deliver on the fundamentals but do it through a big wave of change. Kronlokken believes that Walmart as a whole has responded in an innovative way to keep customers happy and safe during uncertain times.

“I am so proud to work at Walmart,” she said. “I think there is a high urgency to be agile and change the way we work and the way we think about the business. It is so energizing to me.”

Kronlokken is thankful to be at Walmart and Sam’s Club, where she believes they truly build up their employees. It is a similar environment to Baylor, she said, where the principle of serving others is key. She plans to continue pouring her energy into making the customers’ lives easier for the foreseeable future.

“I have this theme: Invest where your feet are,” she said. “What is next for me is what is in front of me.”

Homecoming 2020

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many Homecoming events will not be decided on until the last minute. For the most up-to-date information on all things Baylor Homecoming, please visit baylor.edu/homecoming.

Real-World Learning

Portfolio management practicum courses bring the real world to the classroom

By Justin Walker

There is no better way to learn than by doing. For the students in the portfolio management practicum courses within the Hankamer School of Business, there is a lot of doing.

Housed within the Department of Finance, Insurance & Real Estate (FIRE), the hands-on, high-impact courses equip students with the knowledge and resources they would need to research, analyze and manage an institutional investment portfolio. Brandon Troegle, a part-time lecturer for the department and managing director and portfolio manager with Hillcrest Asset Management, serves as one of the professors for the course.

“There was a lot of forethought into what students needed to know when the first course was launched in 2001,” Troegle said. “There were not many student-managed portfolios across the country. When it was introduced at Baylor, the School was forward-thinking and it became an integral component of the business school that helped set it apart.”

The Large Cap Portfolio Management Practicum was created with about $400,000 in capital. The one-semester course was designed to reflect the operation of an investment management firm, Troegle said. Student teams prepare detailed reports on companies with large-cap stocks, such as Apple and Microsoft. The presentations feature a detailed report on the stocks which leads to a class discussion on whether or not to invest in the company.

Over the years, the fund—The Philip M. Dorr Alumni and Friends Endowed Investment Fund—has grown to more than $9 million. This was done through generous contributions from alumni and friends, including Dorr, as well as university endowments and appreciation from successful investments made by the fund. It is a big responsibility for these students to handle these decisions, Troegle said.

“It is not an easy course,” he said. “There is a lot of research that goes into the analysis. It’s a lot of work to get your arms around a company for the first time. Then they have to communicate those insights to a room full of peers, and the professors who are investment professionals. These presentations are in depth—sometimes an hour and a half—and then fellow analysts in the class get a chance to ask questions and debate the merits of the investment with them.”

The experience in the class is designed to mirror the real world, which is why the class has always been taught by industry professionals. Students are conducting a level of security research and valuation analysis similar to working in the industry, so that they are prepared to embark on investment careers when they leave Baylor.

The Small Cap Portfolio Management Practicum is structured in a similar style to the large-cap course, with a few significant differences. The first is in the name—instead of researching large companies, many found in the S&P 500 stocks, students in this course research smaller companies with a market capitalization of under $4 billion, Troegle said.

“These are much smaller companies, some of which the students have not heard of before,” he said. “It is a fun class because it is really focused on just doing in-depth research on companies that have less publicly-available information than the large-cap stocks less coverage by investment professionals.”

The length of the course is another major difference. The small-cap practicum is a two-semester course with an emphasis on out-of-class assignments and in-class discussion. The fall course, FIN 4285, is a two-hour course, followed by the one-hour FIN 4186 course in the spring.

Another element unique to the small-cap practicum is the intercollegiate challenges in which a team competes. Each year, a student team from the course represents Baylor at the Southwest Region’s Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Investment Research Challenge. The team presents a written analysis and report on a pre-selected company and, if chosen for the top ten finalists, gives a ten-minute oral presentation in front of industry professionals.

Baylor finished in first place in 2019 and advanced to the national competition in New York City. The success is very meaningful to the practicum and the Hankamer School of Business, Troegle said. It showcases the students’ knowledge of the content they are learning in these courses and can apply the principles outside of the classroom to great success. That understanding has led many alumni of the practicums to big places, such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The success of the practicums comes with an added bonus for students as well. Money generated through the investments has been distributed as student stcholarships. Since 2005, more than $2 million in scholarships have been distributed with proceeds from the fund.

The relevancy of these courses is not lost on Troegle. He sees the value in what the students are doing and believes in its unique approach.

“These classes are very different because they bring the real world into the classroom,” he said. “This is not a course where the answers are in a textbook and there is an objective answer. This is the real world.”

For information on the application process to either the Large- or Small-Cap Practicum, go to www.baylor.edu/business/financialmarkets/.

Lead by Example

By David Brooks

CEO
Independent Bank
McKinney, Texas

Thirty-five years ago, when I was a young banker at one of Texas’ then-largest banks, I was presented with the challenge of opening a new location and building out a team of bankers and local board members. It was a prospect that was both daunting and humbling, even to a hungry young banker who didn’t yet know what he didn’t know. Fortunately, the new location was part of one of the most successful and well-managed Texas bank holding companies at the time, so I got a lot of help and guidance from leaders across other markets to serve as a blueprint.

My experience as a student at Baylor helped me in unexpected ways. While I worked my way through school as an undergrad, I encountered some challenging environments at my part-time jobs that often stood in contrast to the core values that shaped me through my education and upbringing. This juxtaposition led me to form strong opinions about the attitude, character, and overall quality of individuals I chose to work with as a professional. In building a team, I knew that I wanted leaders with a positive attitude and a progressive approach to managing people. I wanted to set an expectation of high performance, while also creating opportunities for people to grow. In the end, I wanted to create a customer-focused company.

Eventually, I left the big bank scene and joined a smaller community banking company. Community banking naturally caters to purpose-driven individuals and I quickly saw how to build opportunity, stability and prosperity in our communities with each customer we served. For the first time, I clearly saw the full impact a strong financial institution could have on a community. I was instantly hooked and this began a lifelong passion for building strong, healthy communities that has guided me to this day.

In 1988, I led an investment group that purchased a community bank with $50 million in assets that has grown into Independent Financial—a regional banking company with $15.6 billion in assets and 94 locations across Texas and Colorado. As I have entered the later stages of my career, I have a great vantage point looking back on what I believe has allowed us to have the success we have enjoyed along the way. I’d like to share these few thoughts and ideas with you:

• Make your company bigger than the business you are in. In today’s world, it’s critical to have a purpose greater than profit. Our teams at Independent Financial share a passion for solving problems through focusing on our communities and what their needs, challenges and opportunities are. Yes, we strive to be the best bankers in the business, but we believe that great bankers are also great community builders. Together, we provide leadership and connect our community’s needs to the resources that can help provide solutions.
• Do everything you can to make your company a great place to work. A big part of this is the leadership style within your company. At our company, we believe great leaders view leadership as an opportunity to serve others. We try to practice what we preach when it comes to being community servants and we’re always listening and encouraging growth and development across our company. If you are successful at doing this, great people will choose to join you on the journey.
• No matter what industry you are in, be a tireless advocate. Serve as a leader in trade associations and take every chance you get to speak about the benefits your industry provides to your customers and communities. We’re passionate about what we do and we’re constantly advocating for the unique abilities of community banks to facilitate economic growth, job creation and a better quality of life for all Americans. To this same end, never stop raising the bar and forging ahead for your industry even if you feel you’re outpacing the competition. Entrepreneurs are always looking for opportunities to take advantage of lazy incumbents and even your best customers are always open to a better offer from the competition.
• Humility and a willingness to listen are the most winsome of all leadership qualities. The Socratic paradox, “I know that I know nothing,” is a useful guidepost. Humility is a prerequisite for an open mind and listening is the fastest path to learning. Our bankers can only best serve our customers and communities by constantly listening to their needs and learning how to best solve them. In every business, the more you listen and observe, the more successful you’ll become.

Wherever you find yourself, you have an opportunity to lead and be an example. Don’t miss the opportunity.

Overcoming Obstacles

Eric Offei-Addo has faced many challenges in life, always comes out with a new lesson learned

By Justin Walker

Sometimes we prepare for the worst yet nothing ends up happening. Other times we are ill-prepared for when disaster strikes and end up lost or starting over from scratch. If you ask Eric Offei-Addo—who has navigated coup d’états, 9/11 and now COVID-19—those previous preparations are likely useful beyond its intended purposes.

Offei-Addo was born and raised in Ghana, a West African country known for its gold, cocoa and oil. His parents were both educators, his mother was an elementary school teacher and father was a Presbyterian minister, which led his family to move around to different congregations. Religion was a significant aspect of his family, and it quickly became important to Offei-Addo, as well.

After finishing secondary school, Offei-Addo enrolled at the University of Ghana where he studied Economics. In 1982, while still attending the university, a coup d’état occurred within Ghana’s government.

“When the government was overthrown, students were asked to do voluntary work around the country,” Offei-Addo said. “I was not amused by the unnecessary interruption of our education and academic year, notably given the high unemployment rate and numerous unoccupied hands who could just have been gainfully employed to perform such tasks, yet I was lucky.”

Eric Offei-Addo, MBA ’89
Executive Director, Morgan Stanley
New York City, New YorkOffei-Addo was granted an internship opportunity in the Netherlands, working at Algemene Bank Nederland. He was there for roughly a year before returning for his final semester in Ghana. Once he graduated, he was required to complete his national service. His professor requested he join him at the Ghana Commercial Bank, working in the Economics Intelligence Department.

One of Offei-Addo’s responsibilities there was contributing to a monthly economic bulletin. He was tasked with showcasing the profitability of the timber industry, one of the leading agricultural commodities in Ghana. The report ended up being a success, even being included in a magazine and part of the promotional material at Ghana’s first trade fair for lumber products and exhibition for the Furniture and Woodworking Industry, GIFEX ’85.

This led Offei-Addo to consider graduate school to further his knowledge. He sent in applications to schools across England and the United States, eventually landing at Baylor University. He enrolled in the MBA program at Baylor, where he soon met a professor who truly understood his learning style.

“In Ghana, I did not study any accounting,” he said. “Baylor was the first place I learned the subject. There was a professor who explained it in a very easy manner and I really enjoyed it.”

The professor, Becky Jones, used cooking references to explain accounting principles. Offei-Addo loves cooking, so this style of teaching was extremely easy to learn from, he said. After he earned his MBA in 1989, he moved to the Northeast where he served as a bank examiner for the State of Connecticut Department of Banking. Despite working full time, Offei-Addo continued studying accounting on the side, eventually passing the CPA exam.

As he grew in his career, Offei-Addo noticed how a majority of his work intersected with legal practices. He soon decided to go back to school, but this time, he enrolled at Cornell University’s Law School. When he graduated with his JD in 2000, he went to work for the Brown and Wood law firm in New York City.

His office was located in Tower One of the World Trade Center.

Offei-Addo returned from a trip home to Ghana in the early part of September 2001. On Sept. 10, he worked late into the evening in order to meet a deadline. While he did not finish, he decided to retire to his apartment across the river in Brooklyn and would return early the next morning to finalize the drafts.

Fortunately for him, jetlag set it. Offei-Addo awoke at about 3 a.m. on Sept. 11, unable to fall asleep for several hours and eventually sleeping through his alarms. He awoke to several phone calls from coworkers asking if he had heard what happened.

“We initially thought it was a helicopter accident, which was not surprising given the regular fly-by of news choppers,” he said. “It was not until my family called me from Ghana to check on me that I realized the severity.”

Within minutes, the second plane hit. It was not long before the towers fell.

Work, much like everything else those days, was uncertain. All of the firm’s material records were lost in the attacks, as was the case for many companies. Offei-Addo returned to work a few weeks later, this time for Sidney Austin LLP, who had been in the process of merging with Brown and Wood prior to the attacks.

His first day back, Offei-Addo was hit with a surprise. Each of his colleagues was handed a CD containing every email and computer file they ever had sent or created at Brown and Wood. But how?

“Y2K,” Offei-Addo said. “It was supposed to be the end of the business world as we knew it. Turns out it saved it.”

In preparation for Y2K, the U.S. government and business invested roughly $50 billion in systems to protect against the potential problems anticipated due to the pre-millennium practice of using two digits to designate a year. One of the safeguarding protocols implemented at the company included computers being backed up every 15 minutes to a server, typically in a different region of the county, Offei-Addo said.

This safeguard for an event that never happened ended up saving the business nearly two years later. It is this type of unplanned innovation that Offei-Addo sees being implemented now during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We used to yell at our son for playing video games all the time. He would sit there for hours chatting with people from all over,” he said. “But while we were yelling, someone else saw an opportunity to connect people from around the world in real-time. Zoom, Skype and most of the virtual-meeting sites were all developed well before COVID. And now they are being utilized in ways we never dreamt of for business, church, friends and family meetings.”

Now an executive director at Morgan Stanley, Offei-Addo relies on technologies not designed for their current use to do his job. He never imagined meeting with clients virtually would be the norm, but he is thankful it is possible.

The thought behind these advancements was not to be life-changing, yet they ended up being. The advancements were full of creativity, opportunity and ingenuity, all things he sees happening at Baylor and the Hankamer School of Business. This is one of the reasons he continues to give back to the University in many ways, most recently agreeing to serve on the Hankamer School of Business Dean’s Advisory Board. He believes the next unplanned innovation is being created right in Waco.

“Places like Baylor and Hankamer would have to help people to think through these kinds of changes,” he said. “Just like people prepared for Y2K and it helped with 9/11. Hankamer is perfectly set up to prepare for something that could and would one day come.”

Investing in Connections

Hankamer investment networks yield benefits for alumni and students

By Justin Walker

Investments play a crucial role in our society, as do mentorships. While investments drive economic development and the profits can often be invested in other opportunities, mentorships are shown to promote stronger identity and higher satisfaction within a position or a career.

This idea of promoting mentorship through investing is the backbone of two networks within the Hankamer School of Business (HSB).

The Baylor Angel Network (BAN) was formed in 2009 as an investment network with opportunities for angel investors to contribute early-stage capital to privately-owned, start-up companies. The network brings students, entrepreneurs and investors—also called angels—together to support early-stage business ventures.

The network operates through the angel investors partnering with student analysts to review and select entrepreneurs for potential investment opportunities. The angels decide which entrepreneurial teams they want to invest in, either individually, with the network or through associated funds. Portions of the profit from these investments are then directed back to Baylor University in a variety of ways, John Sommers, the treasurer and business development manager at Sentinel Peak Resources, said.

“There is this idea that Baylor always supports Baylor,” Sommers, who earned his BBA in Baylor Business Fellows, Finance and Economics in 2012, said. “BAN was built to benefit Baylor. Not just the University, but also students and alumni.”

The benefits for angel investors—who are often but not always alumni of Baylor—are tremendous, Sommers said. The opportunity to give back is always rewarding, he said.

“It may be cliche, but any time that you are mentoring or giving back, you typically get more out of it than the mentees do,” he said. “I think you will hear that from every angel.”

Being involved with BAN also allows investors to stay plugged into the University and HSB, Sommers said. Angels gain the ability to see what students are learning in their coursework and how they are applying it to their analyst roles. They are also actively involved in suggesting certain topics across HSB to ensure students are prepared to be successful in the workforce.

Another advantage is an increased connection to the Baylor alumni network, Sommers said. Through BAN, Sommers has met people from many different industries. The varying knowledge and expertise that exists within the network can come in handy if or when issues arise.

“I am an oil and gas guy but maybe there is a cloud computing expert that is investing in the same deal,” he said. “We now have a mutual connection. If I have a problem come up in that arena, I know the right guy to call.”

That network benefit extends to the students as well. As an analyst, students have the ability to work directly with many angel investors and begin to gain valuable real-world investing experience as well as develop a professional network. In addition, the student analysts receive mentorship and experience during their time in BAN that carries benefits beyond a career.

Sommers, who served as a student analyst for BAN while attending Baylor and now participates as an angel investor, helped to create another network within HSB—the Baylor Investment & Advisory Network (I&A Network).

The I&A Network was founded by Sommers, Matthew East, Jonathan Hamilton and Joseph Mercer in 2013 to train and mentor students interested in careers in investment banking and other high finance fields. Students in the network are placed in mentorships with other students as well as with professionals. The goal is for students to gain valuable skills and receive the necessary support to earn an internship or full-time position.

Mentorships exist on three different levels, Sommers said. The first is student-to-student, where a senior invests in a junior, offering advice on courses and college life as well as internship experiences. The second is described as a junior alumni partnership, which consists of a student partnered with a professional mentor who is generally one to three years out of college. The final connection is the senior mentorship, where the mentor is more than five years out of school. It is here that long-term career goals are discussed.

Each mentorship has a focus on career perspective, but the Christian mission is also a significant part of these connections, Sommers said.

“Wall Street is not a place you see a lot of Christian influence,” he said. “That is somewhere we want to be light and salt.”

RC Renberg, a senior studying Baylor Business Fellows, Finance and Entrepreneurship, joined the I&A Network in his freshman year. Renberg spent his first year and a half in the network studying to get into higher finance and learning the processes.

During his junior year, Renberg competed against 13 other students for internships and was one of three placed through the network. He spent the summer of 2020 interning with the private equity company Main Street Capital in Houston. The internship means Renberg will serve as a student liaison for the I&A Network.

“A lot of the success at the student level stems from alumni that were in the organization,” Renberg said. “Those who reach out are willing to help and really drive the networking piece.”

The network element is more than just professional, Sommers said. Being a part of the I&A Network has created a fellowship among the group. Many of them will meet each other when traveling through their homes or plan trips together. For Sommers, it is even more of a personal bond with some.

“I think there were three or four guys in my wedding,” he said. “There was another three or four that I was in their wedding. It has become a true network of individuals that just like being around each other.”

For more information on the Baylor Angel Network, contact Steven Diedrich at steven_diedrich@baylor.edu.

For more information on the Baylor Investment & Advisory Network, contact RC Renberg at RC_Renberg1@baylor.edu.